


All My Instincts They Return

by mostlyharmless



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gas Masks, M/M, Slight fluff, angsty teens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 03:45:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlyharmless/pseuds/mostlyharmless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake stops running away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All My Instincts They Return

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rikudera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikudera/gifts).



It never happens like this in the movies. 

Jake sits on a piece of shattered wall at the very top of one of the dilapidated tombs on Dirk's planet, digging his thumbnail around a screw in his pistol. A heavy block is lodged in his stomach, one that has been compressed over months into something pointy and painful. Something has to give.

Dirk appears in the archway. One moment he's not there, the next he is. Most people wouldn't go popping about near crack shot adventurers holing up in dicey tombs crawling with the undead, really! What motivated Dirk to do that? Jake's guts twist. Is Dirk trying to prove that he trusts in Jake's reflexes? Or is he just underestimating him? It's impossible that he just didn't think. Dirk is always thinking.

"Hey." Dirk begins to saunter closer, which is good, because it's rather difficult to see him through the greenish gloom. Not that it makes much difference with the mask. Or the glasses. Or, well, Dirk. "Ready to check out that tomb? Good to see you brought your mask like I said--"

"Dirk...," Jake starts, tongue darting out to wet his lips. This isn't going to be a gazebo garden gala by any means. "There's something I need to talk to you about."

"...Sure."

That was casual. Almost. Jake is learning how to decode the hidden meaning in Dirk's buggy mid-alpha-testing body language, just as he already has with Dirk's perfectly punctuated text. When he's feeling particularly exasperated he pictures the sound effects floating over Dirk's head like in his Japanese animes.

Even with that slight hitch in his demeanour, Dirk is more smooth and polished than Jake has ever felt.

"Okay then, I guess I'll just jump right in? Well." Jake makes a show of standing up and holstering the gun (avoiding looking Dirk in the eye). "You know, you're a stand up fella. You really are, Dirk. But I'm not sure that. Well, you see, in any duo, there has to be a sort of, a, you know, a level of.... twosomeness... that is to say--"

Christ on a cupcake, he's floundering. Dirk is tensing by degrees.

Jake clears his throat.

"...Cripes, I'm making a right mess of this. Look, I just."

Dirk's shoulders are ramrod stiff. 

"I don't think it's working between us."

Dirk is still as steel, and Jake is wobbling further off-centre. Resentment sparks inside him, he grabs onto that, continues with strength.

"Surely you know what I'm talking about? We're, we're not a team, Dirk. You know how overbearing you've been, don't you? Trying to micromanage my every second? Giving me no flipping room to breathe without you always there, _pushing me_ and _pushing me_ to do and think and feel whatever the dickens you want--"

_"Then tell me what you want, dude!"_

What? Jake's insides lurch. Dirk has never shouted quite like that before. 

Dirk's hands unclench. "How can I factor in what you want if you don't tell me?" he continues, sounding calmer. Blanker? Oh wow no, to blazes with that. 

"Factor in, eh? Do you even hear yourself? This, Strider, is the self-same bulldust I am talking about here!!"

Dirk says nothing. Jake can almost hear his mind whirring. Jake flushes with an angry tingle from head to foot, and then he's marching up to his boyfriend.

"Stop thinking!" he yells, pushing into Dirk's space. "I'm sick and tired of being tied up in blasted knots over Schrödinger's Machinations!" He still can't see Dirk's face at all. They're standing a foot apart and yet he feels like he's still talking at a frigging robot. Yes, _still_ , after all this time, and after all he'd hoped...

A ragged sigh escapes him and he pulls off his own mask, noticing (with exasperation) Dirk's hands flex in worry. 

This particular tomb is tall enough that the uppermost stories sit above the heavy, suffocating layer of krypton that makes the planet so deadly. Oxygen here is still thin, so it's still not a great idea to go without a mask for too long, but Jake English is a bold man and this is what being brave and adventurous is all about.

Dirk stays stock still as Jake reaches up and flips the catch on his, too, pulling it away.

Dirk is sweaty and rumpled from the mask, lips a thin line, eyes very wide. 

The villain Jake's been building up in his head these past few days apart fades right away. 

It's just Dirk, something in his eyes reminiscent of the night he'd said 'I've been in love with you for years, bro' in this raspy little voice. It's just Dirk, and Jake feels everything in his body lock up. Holy shit. 

"Hey, Dirk, no..." Jake flutters his hands a little, goes in for a shoulder-punch that morphs into an awkward embrace. Dirk is still really bad at hugs but Jake will be honest and not blame him entirely this time. "You quite all right there?"

The damn boy looks like he's going to cry. Jake absolutely cannot frigging handle this, this is the worst. He clutches Dirk (still silent and a little rigid) to his side and sinks down, bringing Dirk down with him in an awkward stilted collapse.

They sit there wordlessly amidst the rubble of the broken wall. 

Through the silence, it suddenly strikes Jake that he's forgotten something. He's forgotten that it's not always calculating how to dress up and tweak words that stalls Dirk as he puts together what he wants to say. Mostly he takes his time because he's not used to speaking out loud, at least not to things he didn't program himself. Jake understands. He still gets surprised when people cut over him now and then. How do people just know their cues? It's not at all like chatting over pesterchum. 

Dirk's breaths are catching quietly.

"...I know," comes the reply, finally. "I know I can be overbearing. I am aware of the fact that a huge percentage of the time I act like a bulbous pustular ass, okay Jake, and I'm really fucking sorry it makes you feel smothered. But I don't see how else to handle things."

"How about you don't handle things?" Dirk twitches slightly under Jake's hand. "No, I'm serious. Why is it your job? Why the blazes can't you trust me?"

"It's not you I don't trust," says Dirk.

"That's a cop out if I ever heard one! If you trust me, by Jove, you trust me. Whether I fuck up or something fucks me up, come what may, you need to let me feel--"

He breaks off, unsure. Something is creeping up on him, something else he's been shoving down for a while. A cold wave of guilt makes his eyes prickle wetly. Yeah, that's why.

He's realising a lot of unpleasant things about himself lately. Maybe it's actually being around other human beings, maybe it's just part of getting older. Why do things have to be so hard? 

This is the wall he's turning now to face: It's much easier to find ways to resent someone than it is to confront your own guilt. Easier to forget why you even feel that guilt if you're busy being bitter at someone for making you feel it in the first place. And to simply write the whole thing off as unsalvageable instead of actually confront it, maybe work through it? To shut your heart off from them? More convenient, and a heck of a lot less scary and sad.

Dirk is quiet and heavy under his arm. All the tension has bled out of him. Jake reaches his other hand across and covers Dirk's where it lies limp and defeated between them. Long fingers curl hesitantly into his palm.

Jake takes a deep breath, and lets it out.

"I don't just feel smothered. I also feel like I'm being rushed. If that makes sense. I mean, I told you I was up for it."

"Your exact words were, 'that sounds like an adventure'," Dirk manages.

"...Yes. And I was telling the truth. I'm sure... you knew."

Dirk shifts awkwardly beside him, freeing his hand, and Jake takes the opportunity to bring it up and squash the other boy's head down into his shoulder. Stay.

"You said," and oh wow this is going to be awkward but it needs saying, even if it it's coming out all quavery and stupid, "that you're in love with me. And you're smart, Dirk, and I know you know me. You're usually acutely astute regarding wherever I'm not quite caught up with you, so you have to know I'm not quite where you're at in, um." Here's the test. What's worse, the guilt over feeling this way, or the guilt from saying it out loud? "Ah, the feelings area."

Pressed up like this, he can feel the tension ripple back through Dirk like ice water. But he knows the other boy knew, Dirk's needy overcompensating has been the ambient music to almost every moment in their relationship so far.

Now it hangs in words, tight around them, written in brittle glass threads. If they move something will snap. It has to be the right thing. Jake wishes wishes wishes he wasn't so clumsy and dull and guilty and awful.

Dirk is warm against his side, still like every single one of his hearts are on his sleeve.

"All that means is that you have to let me catch up with you, bro," he says, turning his face into Dirk's hair. "I do care about you, frightfully so. You just have to let me have my adventure getting there, you know?"

Dirk snorts into Jake's shoulder, but the sound is kind of choked. "...So you're not breaking up with me?"

Jake shifts sheepishly. "Er, well. I guess not? I'm sorry, Dirk, I sure blew my lid there. Blew it right to billy-o."

"No. I shouldn't be causing situations where you feel like you have to bottle things up in the first place."

Dirk shifts further into Jake, reaching up and cautiously touching the hand draped over his shoulder. Jake can't stop his own large fingers from tangling with Dirk's.

"And you're right," he continues. "I have been pretty... domineering. I like to feel in control. That is to say, I like to feel capable."

"Me too," interjects Jake, and Dirk lets out a wry huff. 

"Well, yeah. I guess deep down all people want to feel trusted. And needed. Not everyone expresses it like I do, though. I'm not sure how much of that is because of how I had to be growing up in those circumstances, or how much of this is just my nature, or whether it's a mixture, and to what extent. Whether I've been shaped by external force or internal source, check it, to face sea Hitler's threat, without recourse I perforce could show no remorse, be my own resource to keep me out of the fishnet." Oh great, and now he's rapping _and_ getting philosophical. "I'm just messin'. I know how much you hate it when I go on about this stuff." (Jake blushes.) "In the end it's about action. And I guess I have some pretty un-dope tendencies that I need to learn how to recognise before I let them affect how I treat you."

"Um, gee. Thank you."

"But," begins Dirk, and there's that tone, he's weighing up his words very carefully. "There are some things you could recognise too, that might make it easier."

Well if that doesn't make Jake feel a bit put out! "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, dude, you could pipe up a bit more. I know I didn't phrase it very well, but I meant what I said before. If you don't put out there what you want, and you don't vocalise how you feel, then I can't help picking up the slack somehow."

"Picking up the slack, more like ramping up the ballyhoo!"

"Yeah, that's fair. Sorry."

"No, I'm sorry. I... I think I can see what you mean. I... guess I have been leaving a lot up to... well. You."

He sighs deeply and loudly, reeling Dirk right in for one last crushing squeeze before disentangling himself and standing up.

"Romance seemed so darn simple in the movies," Jake groans, stretching, as Dirk rolls to a crouch and gathers up their discarded masks.

"In the movies people all have lines and cues, parentheticals to spell shit out. Besides, they're all actors, obviously. It's much less straightforward with real people. Gut feelings happen to get in the way of a clean thematic arc, sometimes." 

Dirk smiles up at him, teasing but open and happy, and Jake's stomach flips at the rare sight, the usual 'bluuuh Dirksplaining' reaction smothered by a wave of affection.

"You utter goon," says Jake, fondly.

Dirk straightens up and faces Jake. It's strange to see his naked eyes like this, to actually catch the way they rove over Jake's face, cataloguing everything like it's the first time all over again, or perhaps the last time. Like it could be so special every time. Perhaps a few hours ago, Jake would have felt this hit his shoulders like a massive weight. Right now, though.

He reaches out to take his mask from Dirk, drops a clumsy kiss on Dirk's cheek as he does. Dirk huffs, turns to catch Jake's mouth smoothly with his.

The very first warning of gas-dizziness is slowly starting to creep in and this tomb is dark and gloomy and the only movie he knows this saturated with green is the Matrix and. Wow, it may be a brilliant piece of cinema, it may have marvellous pacing and kickass fight scenes and a perfect romance but Jake English will destroy every OP skeleton creature in this universe before he lets things here end like the trilogy did.

Dirk is warm and soft and real, imperfect and frustrating and nearly vibrating with love, and Jake feels his gut clench warmly, a hot rush of hope.

When they break apart, Dirk's features are making these aborted little twitches, obviously battling a full on grin that he quickly hides inside his red gasmask.

Jake doesn't bother hiding his own smile as he dons his own mask.

"Can you help me do up the back?" Dirk asks, suddenly. Jake jolts, surprised. He's never asked that before. "I always get it caught in my fuckin' hair." 

"Er, sure," says Jake, voice coming out muffled. Dirk turns around to present the back of his head, holding out the straps they had alchemised from an old bike helmet. With hands that he has to admit aren't entirely steady, Jake complies, smoothing the soft hairs at Dirk's nape down before fastening the clips and pulling the straps safe and secure.

"So," comes Dirk's tinny voice, "do you still want to check out that tomb with me?"

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because of how sad the recent updates have been making Rikudera! I'm so sorry this is so terrible, I wish I could do better!! I want to believe that things can work out! This is just one way I see how. COMMUNICATE YOU SILLY BOYS

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Just Thinking](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4940050) by [sburbanite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sburbanite/pseuds/sburbanite)




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